What you’re now seeing is profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal, if you've got a long-term perspective on it.

Wall Street didn't buy it. And the American people are a helluva lot smarter than any money-grubbing asshole on Wall Street. The catch is that the "long-term perspective" now needed is one that exceeds the life-expectancy of any living American. You're buying for your grandchildren folks (if you're under 20, that is).

But why shouldn't Obama turn penny stock pusher? The Wall Street 'experts' have proven to be anything but, so why not get the nation's top lawyer in on the game? The catch is, of course, that another fact proven in recent years is that performance of the stock markets has surprisingly little to do with the performance of the economy. Averages like the Dow have been adjusted, fiddled, finagled to immunize them against economic bad news, most particularly by removing firms from the average that do not perform suitably. Now, the entire market is doing so badly (it's not entirely immune) that there is no way but down.

But for Obama to jump in sounds more like a Hail Mary. "Puhleeze puhleeze buy stocks. Give us some good news."

This may be sadly reflective of the advice Obama is getting from Summers, Geithner and Bernanke — the Team Of Rivals. The Team of Rivals is not really in the tradition of Lincoln, but the Republicrat tradition of the past 30 years. It is the Team of Bush & Clinton. Torture, extraordinary rendition, responsibility on civil rights — Bush. Stupid economy — Clinton.

Or perhaps it is only a Team of Softball Rivals, the kind that organized between business buddies — Goldman Sachs versus A.I.G. — to play in Central Park during the warm weather.

One way or another, Obama is getting bupkis from his 'team'. It's quite amazing that his proposed budget is as daring as it is. Perhaps that is an attempt to mollify voters even the blindest of whom can see that the 'bailout' is the largest kickback to slovenly, shit-for-brains, billionaire leeches in history.